Kirkus Star
THE KIRKUS STAR
Awarded to Books of Exceptional Merit

BROWSE BOOK REVIEWS




History Book Reviews Available Now (page 6)


Showing

Cover art for WAR COMES TO GARMSER
NONFICTION
Released: April 1, 2013

"Insightful, knowledgeable account of the "good war," intimately informed from the trenches. "
Using as a model Jeffrey Race's influential first-person Vietnam War–era analysis, War Comes to Long An, Malkasian (A History of Modern Wars of Attrition, 2002, etc.) evenhandedly examines the Garmser district in southern Afghanistan, where he was stationed as a political officer for the State Department between 2009 and 2011. Read full book review >
Cover art for THE WRATH OF COCHISE
NONFICTION
Released: April 1, 2013

"Readers with an interest in the subject would do better to begin with David Roberts' far superior Once They Moved Like the Wind (1993)."
Second-tier, oddly old-fashioned military history by former naval officer Mort (The Hemingway Patrols, 2009). Read full book review >
Cover art for SHRINK
NONFICTION
Released: April 1, 2013

"A lively, if narrow, look at the American century that underplays other aspects of the cultural revolution of the 1960s and '70s."
A cultural historian chronicles the dominant role that Freudian psychology has come to play in our culture. Read full book review >
Cover art for AMERICAN JEWS AND AMERICA'S GAME
NONFICTION
Released: April 1, 2013

"Almost always charming, occasionally enlightening and sometimes just plain odd."
An idiosyncratic collection of interviews with American Jews on, off and some barely near the field of baseball. Read full book review >
Cover art for MASTERS OF THE WORD
NONFICTION
Released: April 1, 2013

"A smart take from an unusual angle on a much-discussed media trend."
Financial historian Bernstein (A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, 2008, etc.) shifts gears slightly to focus on communication as an engine of change. Read full book review >
Cover art for THE FLOWER OF EMPIRE
NONFICTION
Released: April 1, 2013

"A fresh and often witty account in which the author quotes freely from correspondence and periodicals to create a lively portrait of Victorian England and of the widespread passion for flowers and gardening at that time."
A deftly told tale of a magnificent water lily that, during the Victorian age, captured the attention of British horticulturalists, wowed the British public and became the inspiration for the Crystal Palace, then the largest building in the world. Read full book review >
Cover art for A BRIEF HISTORY OF CLEOPATRA
NONFICTION
Released: April 1, 2013

"The author writes in a conversational, rarely pedantic style, freely quoting authors such as Joann Fletcher and Stacy Schiff, and the book is a painless primer leading up to the Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt Cleopatra film."
Not so much a biography of the queen as a basic history of the rise of Rome. Read full book review >
Cover art for PÈRE MARIE-BENOÎT AND JEWISH RESCUE
NONFICTION
Released: April 1, 2013

"A bright light within a dark, deeply distressing time in history."
Zuccotti (Holocaust Odysseys: The Jews of Saint-Martin-Vesubie and Their Flight through France and Italy, 2007, etc.) pursues the undercover work by a French priest in aiding the Jews in Marseille and then Rome elude capture and death by the Nazis during World War II. Read full book review >
Cover art for FIERCE ANGELS
NONFICTION
Released: April 1, 2013

"New, urgent awareness of seeing black women as, in the words of BET co-founder Sheila Johnson, "fully human and fully powerful.""
In this thorough study of popular icons and real women, an update of the 2010 edition, Parks (American Studies/Univ. of Maryland) finds the myth of the strong black woman--variously known as the Sacred Dark Feminine, Black Madonna, Mammy, Angry Black Woman--both slippery and resonant. Read full book review >
Cover art for MR. WRIGLEY'S BALL CLUB
NONFICTION
Released: April 1, 2013

"An absolute must for any baseball fan's library."
A baseball historian recaptures Chicago's most notorious era and the city's love affair with one of baseball's most colorful teams. Read full book review >
Cover art for THE JET SEX
NONFICTION
Released: April 1, 2013

"At a time when women weren't supposed to want to travel beyond their fenced yards, stewardesses set their sights on the sky; this book lovingly salutes them."
A historian chronicles the stewardess' trajectory from friendly nurse to sultry sex symbol during the "golden age" of flying, 1945–1970. Read full book review >
Cover art for THOSE ANGRY DAYS
NONFICTION
Released: March 26, 2013

"A vivid, colorful evocation of a charged era."
A fully fleshed-out portrait of the battle between the interventionists and isolationists in the 18 months leading up to Pearl Harbor. Read full book review >